The Ghana Federation of Disability Organizations, MindFreedom -Ghana and the Media Caucus on Disability, have completed work on a draft Legislative Instrument (LI) meant to give impetus to the Ghana Disability Act, 715(2006).
Even though the parent Act, Act 715 (2006) is undergoing transition to make it compatible with the United Nations Convention on the Right of Persons with Disability (UNCRPD), stakeholders have emphasized the need for a proactive approach to ensure that the LI takes off with the Act when it is amended by Parliament.
The draft LI is expected to be presented to the Ministry of Gender Children and Social protection for further scrutiny and onward submission to Parliament in the coming days.
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The LI, sighted by Public Agenda has several parts including; Human Rights Of Persons With Disabilities, The Right To Health, Employment Of Persons With Disabilities, Accessibility, The National Council On Persons With Disabilities, Disability Rights Protection Fund, Affirmative Action Programme For Persons With Disabilities, Adequate Standard of Living and Social Protection among other relevant provisions.
The Ghana Disability Act was passed 13 years ago but has no LI to operationalize it due to some inconsistencies in the Act with the UNCRPD.
Ghana ratified the UNCRPD in in 2012 however the harmonization of Act 715 with the convention is a basic prerequisite to pave way for the draft of the LI, this thus called for the need to revise the current Law to be in tune with the International Convention.
The GFD and its partners had done some gap analysis of Act 715 vis-à-vis the UNCRPD and had identified some gaps that needed to be addressed in the revised Act.
Mr Moses Fordjour, the Monitoring, Evaluation and Knowledge Officer of GFD, told the media recently that, “We have gone ahead to produce a draft revised Disability Act for Ghana and contracted consultants to work with us to develop an LI based on revision we have done, so that when the time comes for us to sit with government we would have those two documents to move the process faster.”
The work on the draft Legislative Instrument is beingspearheaded by the Ghana Federation of Disability Organizations, MindFreedom -Ghana and the Media Caucus on Disability with support from the Disability Right Fund.
By Mohammed Suleman
